Tesla names new board chair

Tesla has named a new chair of its board of di­rec­tors to re­place Elon Musk, as re­quired by a set­tle­ment the com­pany reached with the Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion.

Robyn Den­holm, who be­came Tesla's first fe­male board di­rec­tor in 2014 and had headed the board's au­dit com­mit­tee, will quit her job as chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer and head of strat­egy at Aus­tralia tele­com giant Tel­stra and within six months will fo­cus full time on the chair­man po­si­tion at the Sil­i­con Val­ley elec­tric-car maker.

"I be­lieve in this com­pany, I be­lieve in its mis­sion and I look for­ward to help­ing Elon and the Tesla team achieve sus­tain­able prof­itabil­ity and drive long-term share­holder value," Den­holm said in a state­ment late Wed­nes­day.

Den­holm's ex­pe­ri­ence in­cludes ex­ec­u­tive po­si­tions at Ju­niper Net­works and Sun Mi­crosys­tems, and fi­nance work at Toy­ota in Aus­tralia.

"I look for­ward to work­ing even more closely with Robyn as we con­tinue ac­cel­er­at­ing the ad­vent of sus­tain­able en­ergy," Musk said in Wed­nes­day's an­nounce­ment.

Un­der the SEC set­tle­ment, Musk had to step down as chair­man but keep his CEO po­si­tion, and Tesla was to name a new chair­man of the board and ap­point two new in­de­pen­dent di­rec­tors. It has not yet an­nounced the two new di­rec­tors.

In ad­di­tion, Tesla and Musk were or­dered to pay $20 mil­lion each as part of the set­tle­ment over Musk's failed takepri­vate plan. In Au­gust, he tweeted that he had se­cured fund­ing to take Tesla pri­vate. A cou­ple of weeks later, it turned out that was not true, and the SEC ac­cused him of mis­lead­ing in­vestors.